The Defense Department will provide $70 million of funding over five years for the ALMMII, matched by at least $78 million from industry, universities and state and local governments. The institute will place more than $100 million in pre-competitive R&D projects with partner organizations.

The Pentagon will provide another $70 million in funding to the Digital Lab, with industry, academia, government and other partners committing another $250 million. Illinois is providing $16 million in state funding for the institute.

“Furthering the development and application of digital manufacturing technologies and making them more available to small and medium-sized businesses in our supply chain is a critical goal for our industry,” says a statement from Boeing Research & Technologies, which leads the company’s participation in both institutes.

The government has also launched the competition for an Advanced Composites Manufacturing Innovation Institute with $70 million in Energy Department funding and the goal of lowering costs by 50%, energy use in manufacturing by 75% and increasing recyclability to more than 95% within 10 years.

The first node in a network of centers was established in January—the Next-Generation Power Electronics Manufacturing Innovation Institute in Raleigh, N.C. is led by North Carolina State University, with $70 million in Energy Department funding. It is focused on wide-bandgap semiconductors.

Non-profit EWI will lead the lightweight materials institute with the University of Michigan and Ohio State University. Its main office will be in Canton, Mich., with significant activity in Columbus. Ohio and Michigan are each providing $10 million in state funding.

The ALMII will be focused on removing the technological barriers to manufacturing new lightweight, high-performing metals and alloys, accelerating the transition from laboratory to production and training the workforce in using the new technologies.

The institute will act as a “teaching factory” and provide shared assets to give companies access to capabilities and equipment to design, test and pilot new products and manufacturing processes, the White House says in a statement.

The Digital Lab will bring together manufacturing experts and software companies to integrate the 3-D design “digital thread” across the supply chain. Challenges include establishing true interoperability, managing intellectual property, maintaining network security and developing new organization cultures, the White House says.

The Digital Lab will use an open-source online software platform—the Digital Manufacturing Commons—to form networks of people, manufacturing machines and factories, and enable real-time collaboration and “big data” analysis to reduce design and manufacturing time and cost, UI Labs says.

2015 Media Materials

Blogs

A Saudi-led coalition of Middle Eastern and African states has started a major air campaign against Houthi rebels in Yemen. We take a look at the air assets assembled for Operation Decisive Storm....More

"He will do great," predicted NASA astronaut Barry "Butch" Wilmore, who returned to Earth after 5 1/2 months on the ISS earlier this month. Wilmore watched Scott Kelly's lift off from NASA's Mission Control in Houston....More

Cold War kids like me still remember the Open Skies treaty, the 1992 agreement by members of NATO and the then Warsaw Pact to allow observation flights over their territory as a confidence-building measure....More

"We are discovering all kinds of exotic planets, worlds that have oceans of molten rock, worlds that have not one but two stars rising in the East and setting in the West," said Natalie Batalha, Kepler mission scientist....More

As the U.S. Marine Corps continues to tack back to its expeditionary core and the U.S. remains on course for its Asia-Pacific rebalance, the question of the force‚Äôs relevance is again coming to the fore....More